I currently work two part-time jobs. I had been collecting unemployment since being laid off for a semester in my primary job as adjunct faculty for one of the area technical colleges. Even though there are still many people out of work in this state, enrollment in several programs at the technical colleges has been down. My regular unemployment ran out, and I began collecting extended benefits (which now are no longer available, an issue being debated in Congress).

The income I claimed was strictly from my two part-time jobs. Before taxes, my income is below the poverty line of $958 per month for a single person - low enough to qualify for Medicaid coverage in Wisconsin.

You would think that qualifying for free health insurance would be a good thing. However upon calling the Wisconsin Department of Health and Human Services, I was informed that as a childless adult, I will not qualify for Medicaid until April 1, since changes in BadgerCare have been delayed until then for the convenience of current BadgerCare clients - in other words, people with children.

Childless adults had only been eligible for BadgerCare for a short period of time after former Gov. Jim Doyle expanded the program. For a time, I had BadgerCare Plus Basic coverage for $130 per month, and while it covered very little, it was better than nothing. It kept me from having to rely on Community Care programs offered through a clinic or hospital, or from being uninsured.

I often opted to simply work out a payment plan and pay my health costs out of pocket. I want to be responsible. I want to have health coverage, and I want to purchase it without going broke. This is what the Affordable Care Act was supposed to do. It was supposed to get rid of the backdoor tax - people with insurance forced indirectly to pay for those who don't have it - by making everyone, the healthy and the sick, pay into the pool. The plan should lower costs of group-rate coverage because the "group" is everyone. Supposedly.

Falling through the cracks

I'll learn this month whether my class will run, and with it some more income for me from teaching. That is how it is for adjunct faculty. If the class is a go and my income is high enough, I can then reapply through the marketplace and purchase health insurance for $95 per month, and my coverage would begin in February. Supposedly. If the class is not offered, I would not have any insurance coverage until April 1, at which time I would be on the state's new (yet old) Medicaid program known as BadgerCare Basic. Supposedly.

Eventually, I will be covered, but not yet. I will not receive a tax penalty since I completed my application and the result was that I could not buy from the exchanges if I wanted to, but instead had to be referred to Medicaid, a state program.

This makes me wonder how many other people are to fall through the cracks here in Wisconsin. When Gov. Scott Walker turned down federal dollars for expanded Medicaid, it made our qualifications for a person to receive Medicaid different from those of the Affordable Care Act. Walker, like many Republican governors, opted not to come up with a state plan for health care. In general, the states without plans are the ones where people have had a difficult time applying.

Consequences of Walker's decision

The only thing that is a sure thing in Wisconsin is that we are paying more and getting less. My mother refers to this as "double tax," since we are paying federal taxes to cover expanded Medicaid even though we are not getting it, and therefore are still stuck paying a backdoor tax at the doctor's office to cover all of the uninsured.

Before this, health insurance was simply unaffordable for me. Now it is downright impossible. The blame does not lie at the feet of the creators of the Affordable Care Act, but rather at the feet of our own governor, who cynically robbed certain people in Wisconsin of their health care to prevent the Affordable Care Act from working.

I need health insurance, but my governor put politics before the well-being of his constituents.

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I tried to buy health insurance and wasn't allowed: column

In early October, I wrote a guest column about my experience with applying for health insurance, or at least attempting to apply, on the federally run website healthcare.gov. Since that time, I tried

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